Mark Deakin, School of the Built Environment, Napier University, , Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, Stephen Curwell, School of Construction and Property Management, Salford University, M6 6AP, UK , United Kingdom
The BEQUEST Toolkit as an Integrating Mechanism for Assessing the Sustainability of Urban Development (assigned to theme
The integrating mechanism for the BEQUEST Toolkit is the vision and methodology of an integrated SUD, the framework for analysis, protocols(s) and assessment methods this provides. Taking this statement as its point of departure, this paper shall provide the collaborative platform and consensus building methodology adopted by BEQUEST to ‘bring together the diversity of interests’ - planners, property developers, designers and constructors and operators - represented as stakeholders in decisions taken about the sustainability of urban development. The paper shall show how the inter-disciplinary language adopted for this exchange has provided a fruitful dialogue between the stakeholders enabling them to devise, agree and adopt as a terms of reference for assessing the sustainability of urban development. In this regard the paper shall outline the extensive review of literature undertaken by BEQUEST and which the network has gone on to forward as the terms of reference which frame the issues and that set out the gateways open for stakeholders to pass through as part of the communities' search for SUD. The paper shall illustrate how the said framework has sought to formalise these gateways as ‘hard and soft’ junctions – crossing points - in the stakeholders’ journey. Junctions where stakeholders cross-over their own boundaries and embark on a journey leading them into other domains on route to SUD. The process by which the said stakeholders ‘beat a path’ to SUD and proceed to ‘stay on track’, will be set out is the BEQUEST protocol. This protocol represents an established code, or set of rules, which mark out a pathway to follow ‘on-route’ to SUD. The paper shall argue that the contribution which the protocol(s) make to SUD should not go unrecognized. This is because they provide a formal link that casts back to the issues, spatial levels and time scales of the framework and connection which throws the protocols forward to the assessment methods. As such they provide a ‘roadmap’ that not only links the ‘top-level’ issues, spatial levels and time frames to the middle-ground codes and rules of ‘first and second level’ protocol(s), vis-a-vis procedures, but which also connects them together as the co-ordinates to follow in ‘getting to the bottom of the matter’ and adopting the assessment methods capable of evaluating the sustainability of urban development. The paper shall conclude by suggesting it is possible to say that the BEQUEST Toolkit ( framework, protocols and assessment methods) sets out the grid references which provide the network - along with its representative community of stakeholders - with a mechanism to support decisions taken about the evaluation of SUD. Decisions that are taken about the framework for analysis, protocol to follow and procedures to adopt in selecting the assessment methods which provide the ‘best tools from the kit’ available to evaluate the sustainability of urban development.
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